My Favourite Things – October 2015

It’s time for the October edition of “My Favourite Things”. A linkup hosted by Raisa and Eirene where you post about something you enjoyed in the previous month.

This month I won’t be talking about things, plural but rather just thing, singular. The one thing that really sort of took over my life in October. A game called Life is Strange.

Life is Strange Title

Life is Strange is an episodic game focusing on Max, a girl who has moved back to her home town (Arcadia Bay) to go to Blackwell Academy because of it’s awesome photography teacher, Mark Jefferson. Apparently he was a big deal back in the 90’s and now he’s teaching at a college and inspiring people like Max.

Storm in Arcadia Bay

One day in class (this is where we meet Max) she is appears to be having a nightmare of a massive storm that will wipe out Arcadia Bay. When she ‘wakes up’ she is certain she wasn’t asleep but doesn’t know what happened… until that is, we (and she) find out she can rewind time and needs to do something to save the town!

Max’s Journal

It’s sort of awesome being able to ‘change your mind’ in a game without having to re-load your save or start over. Each decision you make in Life is Strange causes a ripple (or butterfly) effect and alters the relationships you have with certain characters throughout the game. Max makes you second guess about every decision you make but if you think one outcome might be better than another you can always rewind and choose a different option. Or if you need to get on someone’s good side you can get all the information you need out of them, rewind time and make them think you knew everything about them all along.. Yes, Max can be a bit manipulative with this new found power.

Chloe

You’re not going through this all alone though because you happen to bump into your old best friend Chloe who is super excited about all the mischief she should get up to with Max’s rewind powers, oh and.. you know, saving the world and all that!

Life is Strange runs through 5 episodes and has some pretty major cliffhangers at the end of each… luckily all 5 episodes are now out so you don’t have to wait to see what happens. I really enjoyed playing this game and have spent hours talking to a friend about all our theories of what might happen and how our games differed – it is pretty awesome being able to play the same game as someone but have it not be quite the same.

An Art?

There are also some collectibles throughout the game, Max being the massive photography geek that she is doesn’t use smart phones like the rest of us, but an old polaroid camera and takes photos the old fashioned way throughout the game. The collectibles are all optional photos of scenes that you go through in the game. If you happen to miss any, there is a Collectible mode you can run through too which I’ve utilised.. a lot.

And then, there is the soundtrack. I really love the soundtrack (8:47 on the above video is probably my favourite) and find the songs stuck in my head a lot which makes me want to go home and play the game some more, or start a new save file and make different decisions!

Obviously, you can see I loved this game it will probably remain one of my favourite favourites of the month.

For some reason I thought Life is Strange was a show rather than a game. I’m not much of a gamer but if I were to play something it would be something along the lines of Life is Strange. The graphics look nice, too!